I recently acquired a stash of 5.25” Northstar-related floppy disks. About half are soft sector for the Northstar Dimension, the other half are 10 sector for the Advantage 8/16.
There are, however, about a dozen 10 sector floppies all modified in the same curious way: they have had a write protect sticker stuck over the index hole. Some with the sticker on top, some on bottom; can’t think of any reason that would matter as blocked is blocked. But I’ll mention it.
They seem to have something to do with the Dimension, maybe, as a couple of them are marked with NetWare 1.1.1 related labels (all handwritten). There is a set of what appears to be WordPerfect install floppies (though they don’t say WordPerfect specifically) . A couple also mention the odd term “smutched”. One is actually labeled “smutch.exe”.
Tim Mann’s Catweasel tool (cw2dmk) was unable to find any valid sectors on them, using the option to ignore the index pulse. I am aware that some drives won’t enable data if the pulse is missing entirely but I used a drive that doesn’t care (Teac FD-55BR - I have used it to read unpunched “flippy” disks) and still got nothing.
Does the Dimension really not need the index pulse, despite otherwise using an apparently standard WD-style format? Is something else going on? Does any of this ring any bells with the collected wisdom of the list? What am I likely dealing with here, if I want to recover the contents of these disks?
Thanks.
ok
bear.
>
>The drive works perfectly for double sided disks (using the
>appropriate index hole).
Yea, 8" drives are a bit funny like that.
You know this, because context. Some future google-ologist might not.
So. 8" drives have a different index position for SS and DS.
In your case I suspect either the emitter LED or the receiver
phototransistor ro maybe the wiring or what ever conditioning on the
PCB is b0rken for the SS sensor.
Assuming of course your drive has two sensors -- I have not yet owned
an 8" drive like that, the ones I have had were dedicated SS or DS.
W
USA here, anyone have a Sharp x68000 keyboard and mouse to sell?
The one that I've repaired and am trying to complete is the desktop
version, black, mini-din connector.
--
: Ethan O'Toole
>I have found that computers are much like motorcycles: many of the
>most interesting were never available in the US.
Computers are much like motorcycles: many of the most interesting
ones were TERRIBLE!
W
On 1/31/2024 8:30 PM, mark audacity romberg via cctalk wrote:
> I suppose I should’ve specified “of the versions of BASIC I’ve ever heard anyone talk about still using this century.” :P
Basic09 is probably still in use on OS9000.
VAX BASIC is still in use on VMS ALPHA and Itanium and is about
to be released for the recent port of VMS to x86-64. I personally
know of a number of rather large production systems in VMS BASIC.
RSTS/E is harder to say. There are still a large number of PDP-11
sites running using both real hardware and commercial emulator
systems but which OSes they are using I can't say. Could be all
RT-11 and RSX-11. But then, BASIC-PLUS and BASIC-PLUS2 both run
on RSX-11 as well. I just don't have much experience with RSX-11
as I never really liked it.
And none of this takes into account hobbyists like me who use
all of them.
bill
